When or if you install aux lights that don't come in a kit that you buy at a store, don't make the mistake I did. You might think that an in line fuse holder would be sufficient to protect your equipment. Well, most plastic fuse holders are good for 5 or 10 amps, maybe even 20 with a quality design. They have a max rating which you should be aware of when you buy it. Putting a 30 amp fuse in a holder that's cheaply built or not designed for the current will result in this:
I cut the fuse holder open with a Dremel tool to discover what I could. The fuse holder came with 12AWG wire attached to it, so I figured, it would handle the current; wrong
. The internal spring is not sufficient to prevent the ends of the fuse from heating up and melting the fuse holder and, thank God, blowing the fuse, before starting a fire. Look at the remnant of the fuse, melted to the white plastic holder and the cap contact that I'm holding in my hand:
This is what you want to use for high amp protection:
Available at auto parts stores or electrical suppliers. A circuit breaker. The current type 1 CB will cycle between open and closed until the load drops below the rating. (EDIT: I recommend using a type 2 or type 3 CB instead of a type 1 since operator intervention is required before power is returned to the circuit. Reason being that it was brought up in a later post in this thread that if there is a short, and it goes unnoticed, the contacts inside the CB could "weld on" rendering the CB useless and causing a potentially dangerous fire hazard.) Make sure you get the correct size and use properly crimped terminal lugs to terminate to it. Any loose or bad connections will heat up and become a problem to other wires or components around it. If you look closely at the holder in the following pic, you can see the evidence of overheating, which was my 1st clue that my problem was more than a blown fuse, when my aux lights failed their 1st test:
That's why I cut the ***** open with the Dremel.
I cut the fuse holder open with a Dremel tool to discover what I could. The fuse holder came with 12AWG wire attached to it, so I figured, it would handle the current; wrong
. The internal spring is not sufficient to prevent the ends of the fuse from heating up and melting the fuse holder and, thank God, blowing the fuse, before starting a fire. Look at the remnant of the fuse, melted to the white plastic holder and the cap contact that I'm holding in my hand:
This is what you want to use for high amp protection:
Available at auto parts stores or electrical suppliers. A circuit breaker. The current type 1 CB will cycle between open and closed until the load drops below the rating. (EDIT: I recommend using a type 2 or type 3 CB instead of a type 1 since operator intervention is required before power is returned to the circuit. Reason being that it was brought up in a later post in this thread that if there is a short, and it goes unnoticed, the contacts inside the CB could "weld on" rendering the CB useless and causing a potentially dangerous fire hazard.) Make sure you get the correct size and use properly crimped terminal lugs to terminate to it. Any loose or bad connections will heat up and become a problem to other wires or components around it. If you look closely at the holder in the following pic, you can see the evidence of overheating, which was my 1st clue that my problem was more than a blown fuse, when my aux lights failed their 1st test:
That's why I cut the ***** open with the Dremel.
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. I need to pull the alternator to get to the brushes, but to get it out I need to drain the coolant and pull the lower radiator hose. The charge light was off when I started it the next day, but I don't trust it. Besides aux lights, I'm also running a winch, so I need a healthy charging system.
Howdy!!!
